glacial landform

Introduction
General considerations
- Types of glaciers
- Glacial erosion
- Glacial deposition
Erosional landforms
- Small-scale features of glacial erosion
  - Rock polish
  - Striations
  - P-forms and glacial grooves
- Erosional landforms of valley glaciers
  - Cirques, tarns, U-shaped valleys, arêtes, and horns
  - Hanging valleys
  - Paternoster lakes
  - Roches moutonnées
  - Rock drumlins
- Erosional landforms of continental glaciers
Depositional landforms
- Depositional landforms of valley glaciers
  - Moraines
  - Flutes
- Depositional landforms of continental glaciers
- Meltwater deposits
  - Glaciofluvial deposits
  - Glaciolacustrine deposits
Periglacial landforms
- Felsenmeers, talus, and rock glaciers
- Permafrost, patterned ground, solifluction deposits, and pingos

References & Edit History Related Topics

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Related Questions

How are lateral moraines different from end moraines?
How can moraines be used to reconstruct the former positions of glaciers?
How did glaciers contribute to the formation of the Great Lakes?
How did glaciers help create the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps?
How did the Harbor Hill and Ronkonkama Moraines help shape Long Island?
How do arêtes form between glacial valleys or cirques?
How do cirques form at the heads of glacial valleys?
How do deltas form where meltwater streams enter glacial lakes?
How do eskers form in tunnels beneath glaciers?
How do flutes form beneath glaciers?
How do glacial lakes create beach ridges and wave-cut benches?
How do glacial landforms provide evidence of past ice ages?
How do glaciers carve fjords along mountainous coasts?
How do glaciers create erosional and depositional landforms?
How do glaciers erode bedrock through abrasion and plucking?
How do hanging valleys form after glaciers retreat?
How do kame terraces form between a glacier and a valley wall?
How do kames form as stagnant glacier ice melts?
How do kettle lakes form after buried ice blocks melt?
How do kettles form in glacial deposits?
How do meltwater streams create braided channels in front of glaciers?
How do moraines form at the edges of valley glaciers?
How do roches moutonnées form beneath moving glacier ice?
How do rock fragments carried by glaciers create striations on bedrock?
How do rock glaciers form in high mountain regions?
How do several cirques erode a mountain into a horn?
How do tarn lakes form in cirques?
How do valley glaciers differ from continental ice sheets in the landforms they create?
How do valley trains form from glacial meltwater deposits?
How do varves in glacial lake sediments record seasonal changes?
How does a col form in an arête between two cirques?
How does a sandur form in a low-relief area near a glacier?
How does frost action help form the headwalls of cirques?
How does ground moraine create a hummocky landscape?
How does isostatic rebound occur after an ice sheet melts?
How is a terminal moraine different from a recessional moraine?
How is till different from glacial outwash?
What does a pitted outwash plain reveal about buried glacier ice?
What materials make up glacial till?
Which regions were covered by the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the Pleistocene?
Why are drumlins aligned with the direction of ice flow?
Why are raised beaches found in parts of Arctic Canada and Scandinavia?
Why can glaciers erode basins that streams cannot create?
Why can some eskers extend for hundreds of kilometres?
Why do glaciated mountain regions often have sharp peaks and steep-sided valleys?
Why do waterfalls often form below hanging valleys?
Why does glacial outwash become finer farther from the glacier margin?

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BBC - Bitesize - Glacial landforms

esker:
Nunavut — esker: Nunavut Eskers, or narrow ridges of gravel and sand left by a retreating glacier, wind through western Nunavut, Canada, near the Thelon River.

glacial landform

geology

Written by

Edward B. Evenson

Professor of Geological Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Coeditor of Tills and Related Deposits.

Edward B. EvensonAll

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

glacial landform, any product of flowing ice and meltwater. Such landforms are being produced today in glaciated areas, such as Greenland, Antarctica, and many of the world’s higher mountain ranges. In addition, large expansions of present-day glaciers have recurred during the course of Earth history. At the maximum of the last ice age, which ended about 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, more than 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface was covered by ice. Consequently,...

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